Torrent site Mininova to test video streaming

The popular BitTorrent tracking site Mininova is working with a Dutch university development team in the development of an online video streaming service that may later be integrated into the site.

The service will begin with closed beta testing for a small number of current Mininova users, with no indication when it will be moved to open beta status.

The Tribler team is a group of developers from the Technical University of Delft/Netherlands, who have significant experience with video players and online streaming. Mininova plans to use the open source Swarmplayer program, developed by the Tribler team. With it, beta testers will be able to look at the code to view exactly what is going on inside the Swarm player.

Mininova noted the first tests will only work with the 3,000 "featured" torrents that include movies, books, music and software. A check of Mininova's current list of so-called "features" appears to include some very familiar names, including The Bourne Ultimatum, Ratatouille, and American Gangster -- titles whose licensed status from their respective studios does not appear evident.

Mininova remains one of the most popular BitTorrent sites in the world, with the company announcing it has offered its four billionth torrent download, only three months after announcing its three billionth download. The founder of Mininova last month publicly mentioned the number of torrent downloads from its site has doubled every half year.

Though the legality of the site's operations and services remains questionable, record and movie associations have had very little luck attempting to shut down Mininova thus far.